Lost Causes
by Bandita-Dieci
Summary: The pennies he left behind gleamed copper in the moonlight, and when she bent down to take them, the rabbit stuck his paw out first because a lady should never have to bow in front of her knight. She thought that was funny – her, a lady – but didn't laugh because she didn't know how.


_Author's Note_: This story is actually best read aloud...or, at least, it can be read aloud, I wrote it that way. (I actually kind of talked it through, if that makes sense?) But, yeah, this is basically just a ton of headcanon in a story form - and it is mostly telling, but I hope it's still good and that y'all like it. But, yeah, this'll probably just be a one-shot.

Oh, yeah, and I don't own Jessica Rabbit or Roger Rabbit or any of the characters in WFRR. Disney can keep them. That's cool.

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_Lost Causes__  
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_You don't know how hard it is being a woman looking the way I do._

Jessica felt her whole body shudder once then lay still, breath ragged between parted lips. A bright light flickered on in front of her while another behind shut off. She heard mumbled sounds - later she would know enough to recognize the cadence of _"That's a wrap!"_ - but didn't understand what they were or what they meant. A faint cognizance spoke in the back of her mind as a long weight lifted off of her, and something took her bare hand, some light touch on her weary skin. Her brain wired itself into being just in time for her to make out her co-worker's words:

"Open your eyes, doll. It's over now."

_Yeah, well...you don't know how hard it is being a man looking at a woman looking the way you do._

Her earliest memory was the tail end of an orgasm. She was born having sex. Some would call her lucky.

Jessica just considered herself screwed.

It was one week into the show business before the girl knew anything more than flickering lights, body aches and pleasures, and the hand that led her home; two weeks before she began to string coherent sentences together beyond her script, moans, and the occasional murmuring of some other person's name; three weeks before she noticed the difference in texture between the people filming her and the people filming with her; four weeks before she realized that was a problem; and five weeks before she understood that she was a Toon, created simply for entertainment, and had no choice in the matter.

Later on, she'd say she was lucky she had five weeks because some Toons never had one.

A man took her wrist in a street and forced her against a wall. She told him there was no need to be so blunt, that she was only walking home because she finally knew the way there. He laughed at her.

If she had been human, perhaps someone might have cared, but since she was a Toon, no one listened to her screams.

The next night she asked a new coworker home with her. She meant it as protection. He took it as something else entirely.

Her producer would not let her live on set, so she tried to leave earlier. They didn't like that, said they needed her even longer, and by the end of the night, she'd been passed around like a bong among them. That was when she realized that Toons didn't have any rights – or much of anything really, just a town where they could pretend, for a little while, that they were happy.

Now, some of them might have been happy, and she didn't begrudge them that. As much as she envied their joy, Jessica was never one to outright wish for it to end, nor would she wish to end it herself. But she was never quite sure if any happiness they had was truly theirs or just something engrained in them as a part of their entertainment purpose. Some Toons were created to be happy and to spread happiness. They could have moments of sadness, yes, but only insofar as they ended with laughter – a happy ending, a comedy.

Jessica's line of work didn't really have a happy ending because it didn't really have a beginning. There wasn't much of a plot in Toon pornography, just two characters banging away at each other without guns. So it should come as no surprise that she wasn't really happy, nor should it seem out of bounds that she wasn't really sad either. She wasn't really much of anything but a Toon in a world where that meant nothing.

It wasn't long before she learned the fine art of seduction. Where some Toons had jokes, escape routes, or faulty schemes in their repertories, she had lust and her body and the ability to make grown men grovel at her feet when they weren't reaching down her gown. At first, she used this for her own benefit, but eventually certain human men of the street took great interest in her and acquired copyright ownership of her through various unfortunate means. Then, when she wasn't working one of her films, she was working the streets of Hollywood, sold and being sold for prices that she never saw one lick of return on.

Perhaps worst of all, the town meant for the safety of Toons was worth nothing to her. Jessica watched as other Toons of her position went into the town and came back in an even sorrier state than they left. She heard stories from her coworkers – how the other Toons liked to pretend that they didn't exist and when they did acknowledge them, it was only in biting remarks and barely concealed hatred.

Every Toon had an entertainment purpose, yes, but even in that, there was a hierarchy. In the human world, those with the most fame or money were on top, while those without were on the bottom, but in Toontown, those who provided the most selfless or self-deprecating humor were on top – characters like Goofy, Mickey, Donald, Daffy – while those who fulfilled purposes of pure selfishness were on bottom. In a Toon's eyes, there was no purpose more selfish than getting one's jollies, because Toons didn't really work that way and couldn't quite understand it. Those in Jessica's position lived a kind of half-life – somewhere between Toon and human and never accepted by either because, in both realms, they were the very bottom.

Except when they were on top, but that was neither here nor there.

Jessica kept – or tried to keep – an apartment on the border of the two towns. She made enough money for rent and nothing else because Toons didn't need food or drink, not to live, not like humans did, and so weren't paid enough for such delicacies. In the same vein, Toons didn't need sleep, either, so given her pornography and her prostitution, Jessica wasn't home much. Still, she was thankful she had a home because others in her situation often didn't get that.

Never once did it occur to her that she could be anything other than what she was. Toons got one job and they did that one job, no matter how many films or shorts or roles they took on. Every act was the same; every iteration of the character was simply that – a character invented for one purpose and only one purpose and trying to step outside of that one purpose could cost them everything. Jessica didn't want to fade, not that what she wanted had anything to do with her life, and so she stuck to what she knew.

Until she met Roger.

Now, for Jessica, it was a night just like any other night, and when a man took her wrist and slammed her against the wall once more, throwing two pennies on the ground for her share, she did nothing to dissuade him. She was not worried when he tightened one hand around her throat – she was a Toon; she didn't need to breathe – and the punches and kicks and scratches meant nothing because they would leave nothing behind – Toons didn't bleed. In fact, she was paying so little attention that by the time she noticed the scrawny white rabbit, he had already torn the man off of her and stepped in between them, a bright grin on his face.

She never could remember what exactly it was Roger said to the man. It must have been a joke, something so abnormal for the situation that her customer spat at her, hunched his black trenchcoat around his shoulders, and stalked off. The pennies he left behind gleamed copper in the moonlight, and when she bent down to take them, the rabbit stuck his paw out first because a lady should never have to bow in front of her knight. She thought that was funny – her, a lady – but didn't laugh because she didn't know how.

It wasn't until their first date – if it could be called that, Roger paying her pimp off so that she could be with him and not on the streets – that he taught her how to laugh, and she was surprised to find that the sound could be innocent and childish or girly or brash and haughty – there was a full range of emotions that could be contained in the different ways that people, or Toons, could laugh. It wasn't something she knew to watch for, and so she could never have guessed, not without Roger training her to hear it. And the more time they spent together, the more she found herself steadily growing attached to the comic Toon who not once looked at her as a sex object as every other being before always had but instead looked at her as a whole person worthy of his time and affection. He taught her that she had a choice, and he brought her out of her world into his – one full of light and love and joy and laughter – and that scared her in a way that she didn't know how to comprehend.

Her copyright owner refused her many things, but when Roger's owners stepped in, Jessica was given up without a second thought. After that, she need never perform again, save to keep herself from fading, and that was easily enough accomplished with little tidbits in some of Roger's shorter films. The job at the Ink and Paint Club wasn't necessary, but it allowed her to use some of the gifts she couldn't in a children's show and develop new uses for her abnormally deep throat. Her continuing relationship with the rabbit who saved her and their eventual marriage was just the carrot on top of the cake that her life had become. She asked for nothing, but he gave her everything and so she gave him everything in return.

When Jessica said that she would do anything for Roger, she meant it because she knew where she was before him and where she would still be without him.

_I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way._


End file.
